Originally known as "Black Lotus", and then "True Crime: Hong Kong", Sleeping Dogs is an open-world action game that tells the story of undercover cop Wei Shen as he infiltrates the ranks of the murderous Triads in Hong Kong.

Is this game....racist?

So I started playing Sleeping Dogs last night and within the first ten minutes it has like every asian stereotype ever...The weird music, dead chickens and fish hanging everywhere, spikey hair.... I can't take the game seriously, I find myself laughing hysterically....Is it meant to be a parody, or are you supposed to take it seriously?

Dude have you ever been to a Chinese market? There are dead chickens and fish hanging. That "weird" music is called Chinese music. and it turns out Chinese people can spike their hair too. Weird, I know.

I've never been to Hong Kong so I can't tell, but... if Hong Kong actually has dead chickens, fish, and spikey hair everywhere then no? The game hardly seems like it paints Chinese people as a "lesser" people or whatever so no, I don't think it's racist. The thought never crossed my mind.

So I started playing Sleeping Dogs last night and within the first ten minutes it has like every asian stereotype ever...The weird music, dead chickens and fish hanging everywhere, spikey hair.... I can't take the game seriously, I find myself laughing hysterically....Is it meant to be a parody, or are you supposed to take it seriously?

OP, you're probably just not familiar with Asian culture, that's why you're not noticing the touches to this game that make it so distinctly knowing about Chinese culture, or in the case, culture in Hong Kong (in fact, the many cases of small conversations on the street and outside your apartment involving insults about mainlanders... the average non-Asian American wouldn't get it. Also, Taiwanese street merchant jokes). An American appreciates the satirism of GTA because of its "inside" American jokes, but to others it might just seem stupid. Are all American cities about yellowcabs and, well... racist white people?

There are (admittedly mostly live) chickens and mountains of fish (well mostly lying on the stalls, tho some do hang) in my current home town's market. And it's not even in Asia! And for the record I can't stand the local music.

The world is full of interesting places different from your own.

Those differences are just that differences, it's not racism to simply to portray them as they are.

I'm just saying it seems like it's trying to take all of the silly asian crap and throw it into a game.... So to asian people this is just like GTA IV, and it's all serious (not that GTA IV is entirely serious, but at least tries to be realistic)?

I'm having fun in the game, I just haven't figured out whether it's making fun of asians in a GTA or Saints Row tongue-in-cheek sort of way or if it's serious. I'm guessing it's the latter? My buddies and I were playing drunk and it just seemed hilarious at the time.

So I started playing Sleeping Dogs last night and within the first ten minutes it has like every asian stereotype ever...The weird music, dead chickens and fish hanging everywhere, spikey hair.... I can't take the game seriously, I find myself laughing hysterically....Is it meant to be a parody, or are you supposed to take it seriously?

No. That's how Hong Kong is. The entire voice cast excluding Emma Stone is Chinese. You'd think they'd do the game if it potraied a false stereotype?

I'm just saying it seems like it's trying to take all of the silly asian crap and throw it into a game.... So to asian people this is just like GTA IV, and it's all serious (not that GTA IV is entirely serious, but at least tries to be realistic)?

I'm having fun in the game, I just haven't figured out whether it's making fun of asians in a GTA or Saints Row tongue-in-cheek sort of way or if it's serious. I'm guessing it's the latter? My buddies and I were playing drunk and it just seemed hilarious at the time.

GTA IV is not "entirely serious". It's core story has been argued to be entirely satire. There are parts of it, about American commercialism and "the American dream", materialism and the excess brought out of it, that makes the player laugh, or snort, or maybe feel uncomfortable about. I think it's common knowledge (and I know this personally) that there are people outside of Western American culture who think that American life is actually just like GTA, and if not specifically that, at least mainstream American movies, which are in no way representative of American life.

@SpaceRunaway said:

I just don't think you have any clue about Chinese culture. Is that...racist?

^ pretty much this too. You're not seeing what's distinct about the culture, so you're only seeing the generalization of dirty fish markets and "weird music".

So I started playing Sleeping Dogs last night and within the first ten minutes it has like every asian stereotype ever...The weird music, dead chickens and fish hanging everywhere, spikey hair.... I can't take the game seriously, I find myself laughing hysterically....Is it meant to be a parody, or are you supposed to take it seriously?

No. That's how Hong Kong is. The entire voice cast excluding Emma Stone is Chinese. You'd think they'd do the game if it potraied a false stereotype?

Idk. Saints Row makes fun of ghetto / black culture, doesn't it? Or do they all dress in pimp hats and drive lowriders?

So I started playing Sleeping Dogs last night and within the first ten minutes it has like every asian stereotype ever...The weird music, dead chickens and fish hanging everywhere, spikey hair.... I can't take the game seriously, I find myself laughing hysterically....Is it meant to be a parody, or are you supposed to take it seriously?

No. That's how Hong Kong is. The entire voice cast excluding Emma Stone is Chinese. You'd think they'd do the game if it potraied a false stereotype?

Idk. Saints Row makes fun of ghetto / black culture, doesn't it? Or do they all dress in pimp hats and drive lowriders?

I think you're telling us more about yourself than the games you're talking about. You associate pimp hats with black culture?

So I started playing Sleeping Dogs last night and within the first ten minutes it has like every asian stereotype ever...The weird music, dead chickens and fish hanging everywhere, spikey hair.... I can't take the game seriously, I find myself laughing hysterically....Is it meant to be a parody, or are you supposed to take it seriously?

No. That's how Hong Kong is. The entire voice cast excluding Emma Stone is Chinese. You'd think they'd do the game if it potraied a false stereotype?

Idk. Saints Row makes fun of ghetto / black culture, doesn't it? Or do they all dress in pimp hats and drive lowriders?

I think you're telling us more about yourself than the games you're talking about. You associate pimp hats with black culture?

No, I'm being sarcastic... Geez. I'm saying Saints Row parodies everyone, makes everyone look ridiculous. So what I was asking was if that's what Sleeping Dogs is doing...Because I thought it was hilarious for the first hour.

So I started playing Sleeping Dogs last night and within the first ten minutes it has like every asian stereotype ever...The weird music, dead chickens and fish hanging everywhere, spikey hair.... I can't take the game seriously, I find myself laughing hysterically....Is it meant to be a parody, or are you supposed to take it seriously?

No. That's how Hong Kong is. The entire voice cast excluding Emma Stone is Chinese. You'd think they'd do the game if it potraied a false stereotype?

Idk. Saints Row makes fun of ghetto / black culture, doesn't it? Or do they all dress in pimp hats and drive lowriders?

Sain'ts rows I don't see as satire. It is just sillyness. Taking those elements to a unnatural extreme.

So I started playing Sleeping Dogs last night and within the first ten minutes it has like every asian stereotype ever...The weird music, dead chickens and fish hanging everywhere, spikey hair.... I can't take the game seriously, I find myself laughing hysterically....Is it meant to be a parody, or are you supposed to take it seriously?

No. That's how Hong Kong is. The entire voice cast excluding Emma Stone is Chinese. You'd think they'd do the game if it potraied a false stereotype?

Idk. Saints Row makes fun of ghetto / black culture, doesn't it? Or do they all dress in pimp hats and drive lowriders?

But in all seriousness while not racist perhaps, something that bugged me was how much English spoken dialogue there is. Or more importantly how basically everyone speaks English, including everyday civilians, and then you have Mrs Chu who speaks exclusively in Chinese. It sort of portrayed the idea to me that Chinese was some sort of dying language that only the traditionalists holding on to the past spoke, while everyone else adopted English.

Reading too much into it of course and that obviously wasn't their intent, but it stood out all the same.

But in all seriousness while not racist perhaps, something that bugged me was how much English spoken dialogue there is. Or more importantly how basically everyone speaks English, including everyday civilians, and then you have Mrs Chu who speaks exclusively in Chinese. It sort of portrayed the idea to me that Chinese was some sort of dying language that only the traditionalists holding on to the past spoke, while everyone else adopted English.

Reading too much into it of course and that obviously wasn't their intent, but it stood out all the same.

While I'm kind of an advocate for a universal spoken language (I mean, as homo sapiens, it seems weird that we still have this barrier where some of us can't even communicate with one another due to language), I actually like playing games where people are speaking dialog native to their country. Just give me subtitles and immerse me in the experience.

And edit: I meant to say I definitely agree, even though I know it's not true.

I definitely wouldn't say its racist, but if someone just took a random scene from that game in which a guy was banging a Chinese woman's head into a door while she pleaded for mercy in Mandarin ... people might feel a bit weirded out by that.

But in all seriousness while not racist perhaps, something that bugged me was how much English spoken dialogue there is. Or more importantly how basically everyone speaks English, including everyday civilians, and then you have Mrs Chu who speaks exclusively in Chinese. It sort of portrayed the idea to me that Chinese was some sort of dying language that only the traditionalists holding on to the past spoke, while everyone else adopted English.

Reading too much into it of course and that obviously wasn't their intent, but it stood out all the same.

While I'm kind of an advocate for a universal spoken language (I mean, as homo sapiens, it seems weird that we still have this barrier where some of us can't even communicate with one another due to language barriers), I actually like playing games where people are speaking dialog native to their country. Just give me subtitles and immerse me in the experience.

I agree with both of you but this is a hard sell. You see foreign cultures speaking English in plenty of movies and other games (Assassin's Creed for example, though it was awesome that they gave you the option to go Italian in the AC II trilogy)

I will add though that English is spoken in Hong Kong. Not what you would hear on the street like in the game of course, but, just saying.

At the end of the day it's a choice made for a wider market mainly. And while I do love reading subtitles and foreign language in something like a movie, it can be difficult in a game like Sleeping Dogs where there is dialogue and story occurring during gameplay.

@ArtisanBreads: That's the thing. Just like English is an amalgamation of romance languages (and we use a lot of Spanish, French, etc words, though we completely mutilate them in pronunciation), we know English has become at least partially adopted in a lot of places. Like you said, and obviously, not everyone is going to speak English still.

I think it's weird that you spent the first hour of the game laughing at another culture because you don't understand it. I think you're the one being a bit racist.

Don't start that now. Some very well established comedians make careers out of poking fun at other cultures. If you ever watch media from other countries you'd be surprised how people make fun of Americans.